How to Make PDF Documents

HST proposal submission requires that your scientific justification
be submitted in PDF format. Towards that end, we provide the following
guidelines on creating PDF documents.

Starting from Latex

After doing latex mydocument.tex, ordinarily, one next does
dvips -o mydocument.ps mydocument.dvi. If you do this followed by the
subsequent steps below, the document will look awful on the screen, but print ok.
In order to get the document to look ok on the screen, when you do dvips,
you need to get the fonts right, and so you MUST use the -P flag, e.g.:

dvips -P pdf mydocument.dvi -o mydocument.ps

Then continue with the next step below, since now you have a ps file on a unix or linux machine.

Starting from a ps file on a Unix/Linux machine

Use the program ps2pdf to convert
the file to pdf. (If you can already view postscript files, this conversion
script is almost certainly already installed on your system.)

ps2pdf [options] input.ps output.pdf

Right now, the default behavior is to produce PDF 1.2 output (Acrobat 3-and-later compatible). If you
want to force Acrobat 4-and-later compatible (PDF 1.3), then you should do

This conversion is not perfect, e.g. does not create the most streamlined product,
and the images can look odd on the screen (but ok when printed).

Easiest Way if on a Windows or Mac Machine

The easiest way on a Windows machine if you have Office2007 or later is to just save the file as a PDF.
The same is true on any Mac, in any application just print/save the file as a PDF. Other possibilities include below:

If on a Windows or Mac (with the Adobe products)

With a copy of Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the free version), then any
application that can print to a printer can also produce a PDF file.

If you DO have a copy of Adobe Acrobat (and you selected the appropriate [default]
options when installing it), then from your Windows/Mac application, when you
choose print, you can select "Acrobat PDF Writer" as your printer. Do
NOT select "print to file", simply select the PDF writer as you would
any other real physical printer. It will prompt for a filename. Make sure to
put the file where you can find it; Acrobat uses by default the location where
it was the last time when it created a PDF file, not where your source file is.

If on a Windows or Mac (without the Adobe products)

If you do NOT have a copy of Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not just the free
Acrobat Reader), you can produce a ps file through your Windows/Mac application
and then convert it to PDF. Download a
postscript printer driver if you don't already have one. Open your
original document and go to "File"->"Print". Under the
"Print" popup menu, select the postscript printer driver, and print
to a file. This will create a postscript version of your document. Then "Google" to find
and download a free postscript to PDF utility. (Again, there are lots out there.)
Follow the installation and configuration instructions
carefully. Use this to convert your postscript document to a PDF file. You
could also use ps2pdf (possibly involves transferring your ps file to a place
where you have ps2pdf installed). This link at UIC
describes how to create a ps file from various platforms.

The PDF file may look funny in Adobe Acrobat, but it should print properly. Please
double-check that any strange fonts, symbols, and images were converted properly
before submitting your proposal.

Streamlining your PDF

Ultimately (and optionally), if you'd like to clean up your PDF (remove redundancies,
etc., making a smaller file), there are programs such as PDF Enhancer available.